Do you all have books that you actually enjoyed but never ended up finishing?

I only have two:
A Confederacy of Dunces - Stopped halfway through. I suddenly lost interest in, well, basically everything. He was like fifteen paragraphs into talking about hot dogs when I suddenly decided I no longer gave a damn. The only other person I know who has read this didn't finish it either.
Mostly Harmless (I think? It was the 5th Hitchhiker's Guide book) - After reading the fourth one, which was pretty ehhhhnn, I didn't really have any steam left. I don't remember where I stopped. I don't even remember what was going on. I remember the part where

Marvin died and they saw God's final message to creation (though I don't remember what it was)

but other than that, everything after the second book sort of runs together. I read them too fast, I guess.

Edit: Okay, I just skimmed the HGttG Wikipedia article, and I remember everything a lot more clearly now (so disregard the part about them blurring together). And it turns out the part I spoilered happened in the fourth book. It also turns out that I got farther in the fifth book than I remember (and, hell, I might even have finished it! I'm not sure).

Along with probably dozens of others. As I said in the disappointing books thread, I'm rarely disappointed by the end of a book, because if it's kept my interest long enough for me to finish it, it's probably pretty good. If not, I never get around to finishig it. But that doesn't mean all such books are bad, as in addition to the above three, there are quite a few others which I enjoyed but still never got around to finishing.

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

True. I read "The Hobbit." Prequel to LOTR. That one read a lot better. What really turned me away from the trilogy was the very lengthy detail Gandalf seemed to go into about The Ring's history with Frodo, before he set off. I think the last thing I remember reading was about how Gollum was a Hobbit at one time, and he killed his brother or something over The Ring, and he ended up where he was when we first met him in "The Hobbit."

I haven't finished a million books. I start a lot. and read a lot. but the lot i start is more. Notably: Catch 22, Jude the Obscure, lots of science ones, mostly it's not because i don;t think i would like them if i finisehd them, usually it's because something easier and quicker came along or i got distracted. I liked bits of Catch 22 i just fuond it impossible to keep going because tehre didn't seem to be a plot to follow.

Koeppi wrote:Finished Catch 22 some time ago, and I have to say, as a German who read it in English, it was one of the hardest to read books ever.

I'd imagine so, because it's basically one long idiomatic play on words.

I never finished LotR (though I did finish The Hobbit)
I also never finished Don Quixote. That book was pretty fucking boring. I even got like 300 pages in, and just quit. I still haven't finished Dante's Inferno, but that was because school started just as I was reading it and I had other things I needed to do.

You've just lost twenty dollars and my self respect.

Rat wrote: so i sprinted back down this hill like a fucking mountain goat

Oh goodness. I thought I would kill myself while reading that book. I ended up really liking it the second time through, though.

Little Women and Gone With the Wind are on my list. I intend to revisit Gone with the Wind at some point, but screw Little Women. I just didn't care.

I'm sure there are others, but these are the primary ones. I have a habit of picking up one book, getting halfway through it, picking up another book, reading a good bit of that one, and then finishing book number one. I imagine I've forgotten to pick the first book up again more than once.

Felstaff wrote:

Okita wrote:"What are you up to?"

"Attempting to save the free world and preserve Democracy...without Liza"

But...But [that would] just be announcing you're definitely about to fail.

Shame on you who didn't finish LotR or Confederacy of Dunces or Catch-22. Those are fucking great books.

Books I haven't finished:
Beowulf -some random poet. I finished a crappy "reimagining", though, because it was required for school.
Snow Falling on Cedars -David Guterson. It sucked.
Of Mice and Men -John Steinbeck. I have no excuses.

bbctol wrote:Beowulf -some random poet. I finished a crappy "reimagining", though, because it was required for school.Snow Falling on Cedars -David Guterson. It sucked.Of Mice and Men -John Steinbeck. I have no excuses.

Those are all very worthy reads. Someday, you'll probably go back and like them more. That's what I did with The Scarlet Letter and a bunch of others.

I never finished the second Harry Potter, therefore, I never finished the series. I'll get back to it someday...
Also, I never finished Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I want to.

~Some people are like Slinkies - not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you push them down the stairs.

Overly "This is a book about racism, so it's important", slow, not really very good writing, too simple. To name a few problems. My main problem was that throughout the book, you had a feel of "This book is important, so pay attention!"

bookishbunny wrote:[I never finished the second Harry Potter, therefore, I never finished the series. I'll get back to it someday...

Don't bother.

I started 'The Possessed' by Dostoevsky this summer, and just couldn't get through it for some reason. I was roughly 150 pages in. There's also some Faulkner I started last summer that I didn't make it through. I think school has a seriously detrimental effect on my ability to read for pleasure.

Silver2Falcon wrote:Well, it took me three tries before I could read the Silmarillion. That was several years ago, I don't know if I could do it again.

Try reading it again; I was the same way the first time I read it. Then, once I read it, I re-read LOTR and understood much more of the back stories, the surroundings, etc. After that, I reread Silmarillion, and it was very interesting, and now is one of my favorite books.

In my experience, the books that are most worth reading are those that force you to read them multiple times before really enjoying them.

On topic, I haven't finished The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. I picked it up at least three times and put it down later. The book is fascinating, until you get to the middle, where the author is telling you more of the same and stops providing the fascinating insights into Gandhi's mind. I will finish it someday, but I doubt I will relish it.

bbctol wrote:Overly "This is a book about racism, so it's important", slow, not really very good writing, too simple. To name a few problems. My main problem was that throughout the book, you had a feel of "This book is important, so pay attention!"

I didn't get that "important" feel from it, but I read it when it first came out, so there was none of that aura about it.

~Some people are like Slinkies - not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you push them down the stairs.

The Mists of Avalon - depressing as hell, so I decided to stop about halfway through.
Heart of Darkness - dunno why, but I just lost interest and picked up something else
Gulliver's Travels - I only read the first part, and never got around to the rest.

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

ok...
LotR - i was reading it on a holiday, and got home before i finished it. i was about thirty pages into the return of the king, and i really don't understand what all the fuss is about.
The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess - i got a few hundred pages in and got distracted. but i would like to finish it at some stage
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - much the same
Seeing by Jose Saramago - I really liked most of the characters, and the idea was a good one, but it seemed like a set of short stories linked by the characters i didn't like.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - meh. but apparently its good.

and thats not even counting the books for school i never read - why do they insist on giving insufferably bad 'young adult fiction' to early high school students? honestly, there is neither a time nor a place for Catherine Jinks.

<bakemaster> Only German Sausage can prevent forest fires<felstaff> Hype is like a giant disappointment ray aimed squarely at the finished article.<watson> Treat me like a criminal, Holmes!TMT4L

Heh, there are several, I'm sure, not always for good reaons... I still haven't finished Sewer, Gas and Electric by Matt Ruff, even though I was immensely enjoying it, because I got scared.

But the one that pops to mind, just because of how soon it came, is Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. The very first page of the book asks you to get all relaxed and prepared and to treat the book with respect and make sure you're not going to fall asleep or be interrupted to give proper credence to the story, or some such. Now, usually I do read books through all in a go nonstop, but once it was requested of me, I decided it was unlikely.

I really have to read that thing some day. /:

He does not spout ever more, new stupidities. He "diversifies his wrongness portfolio."(My pronouns are She/Her/Hers)

To be fair, this was towards the end of my "peak reading season" and I read this right after tackling the 1000 page behemoth that is Count of Monte Cristo. Bad choice. I've had a summer to cool down since then and read easier books, so once school starts up and I get back into my days of knocking out 500 page novels in one day, I'll pick it up again.